When the hip-hop star Kanye West says he can “connect with” George W. Bush, perhaps it is time to think about whether America has begun to reconsider its 43rd president.
It was Mr. West, after all, who delivered one of the harshest attacks on Mr. Bush during his eight years in office. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, Mr. West memorably charged that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
After learning last week that Mr. Bush considered that the lowest moment of his presidency, Mr. West went on a Houston radio station to take it back. Noting that he too was accused of bigotry for interrupting Taylor Swift during an MTV awards ceremony last year, Mr. West said he now sympathizes with how his criticism stung Mr. Bush. “I really more connect with him just on a humanitarian level,” Mr. West said.
Whether the rest of the country is ready to connect with Mr. Bush again remains to be seen, but after nearly two years of silence, he is emerging from self-imposed exile to forcefully defend his record and begin the process of defining his legacy at a moment when his successor is on the ropes. As he releases his new memoir, hits the television circuit and prepares to break ground on his presidential center, Mr. Bush finds himself in an evolving place in American society.
Most Americans still do not view him favorably and a good portion still revile him for invading Iraq, waterboarding terror suspects and presiding over the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. He is still a punchline, to many a failed president, the source of today’s economic and foreign policy troubles. And yet, with Mr. Obama increasingly unpopular and “Miss Me Yet?” T-shirts for sale at Washington’s Union Station a short walk from the Capitol, some polls suggest a slight softening of views. Mr. Obama’s blame-Bush strategy did not stop voters last week from returning Republicans to power in the House and handing them more seats in the Senate.
“The statute of limitations of attacking President Bush has passed,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. “They spent a lot of time attacking President Bush, and they got unelected.”
Still, the newly elected Republicans are dancing gingerly around Mr. Bush as he returns to the public stage. In a way, they are borrowing from President Bill Clinton and “triangulating” not only away from Mr. Obama but also from Mr. Bush. Many Republican candidates, particularly those with Tea Party roots, ran against the former president’s spending policies and Wall Street bailout. In his election night victory speech, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the presumed new House speaker, vowed “to take a new approach that hasn’t been tried before in Washington by either party.”
Jim Dyke, a Republican political consultant, said public attitudes toward Mr. Bush have begun to shift but at the same time, the new Congressional leaders need to carve their own path. “They’re wise to be independent and define themselves in a way that is more current and more relative to today’s environment,” he said.
“Given the great issues facing the nation at home and abroad,” added John Weaver, a political strategist who worked for Senator John McCain in his 2000 nomination battle with Mr. Bush, “there isn’t an appetite by the public in looking in the rear-view mirror.”
But Democrats hope Mr. Bush’s new high profile will help them frame the emerging Republican generation. Mark Mellman, a Democratic strategist, called Mr. Bush’s public tour “great news for Democrats.” He added: “The G.O.P. was lucky he was out of sight and out of mind through Tuesday. His reemergence on the national stage will reinforce voters’ already negative views of the G.O.P.”
With rare exception, like helping out with Haiti earthquake relief at Mr. Obama’s request, Mr. Bush has remained out of sight since leaving office, determined not to complicate his successor’s life with running commentary about current affairs. Even as he begins to promote his new book, “Decision Points,” to be published by Crown on Tuesday, he is avoiding any involvement in the political debate now consuming the country.
In the book, a copy of which was obtained last week by The New York Times, he has nothing but gracious things to say about Mr. Obama and makes little mention of his policy choices other than to praise him for sending more troops to Afghanistan. When Oprah Winfrey tried to get him to weigh in on Sarah Palin’s presidential chances in an interview to be aired later this week, Mr. Bush demurred. “You’re asking me to wade back into the swamp,” he said.
Until now, Mr. Bush has focused on writing the book, along with his ghostwriter and former White House speechwriter, Christopher Michel, as well as giving paid speeches, raising money for his presidential center and designing his public policy institute. After this week’s spurt of interviews with Ms. Winfrey, Matt Lauer and Candy Crowley, he will host a Nov. 16 groundbreaking ceremony for the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
He says he is using the institute to influence policy in his own way. “He doesn’t want to be in the current debate, certainly not the political debate,” said James K. Glassman, executive director of the institute. “He wants to be involved in policy in a big way, but with projects that are very forward looking and long term.”
So will Mr. Bush’s reputation improve with time? Many presidents are viewed more generously in later eras, like Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Even Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon have experienced moments of reassessment, their failures in Vietnam and Watergate tempered by appreciation for the opening to China or the Great Society. Still, their disappointments seem indelibly marked in the history books.
A Gallup poll in July found that 45 percent of Americans viewed Mr. Bush favorably, still lower than either Mr. Obama or Mr. Clinton but better than the 34 percent who approved of him when he left office in January 2009. At the same time, when voters were asked in exit polls last Tuesday who was most to blame for current economic woes, they mentioned Mr. Bush along with Wall Street and Mr. Obama.
Mr. Bush has said for years that he imagines history will ultimately appreciate his presidency, crediting him with confronting international terrorism and protecting the country from further attack after Sept. 11, 2001, while promoting freedom abroad and perhaps, if Iraq eventually improves, transplanting the idea of democracy to a once-hostile region. In his book, he recalls that as president he eulogized both Reagan and Gerald R. Ford, noting that both were remembered more warmly by the time they died, and expresses hope that he will be too.
Maybe he will, or maybe that is wishful thinking. In any case, one memoir and a few television interviews by themselves will not be enough to determine the eventual outcome.
“Whatever the verdict on my presidency, I’m comfortable with the fact that I won’t be around to hear it,” he writes. “That’s a decision point only history will reach.”
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